Surely he’ll call, that fool, said Didi. Being the responsible one doesn’t mean being responsible for everyone. Maturity came hard for him. Should he really be wasting it on others? If you are beside him, you may call him Didi. If you are beneath him, he’s Mr. Albert!

I’m not budging until I hear from him again, that weakling, answered Gogo. It’s funny me, Gogo, being called to help someone. Being weak and helpless and needing protection myself, I can’t fathom what it is I might do for another when I can’t do anything for myself. What is it again that happened? To who? When?

If he really needed help, we’d have heard from him by now, he’s so arrogant, responded Pozzo. I see it all with mine own eyes. This is a scam. But I won’t see it for long, something tells me. I’ve heard of people being blinded by rage or ambition or obsession, but arrogance? condescension? pretension? I guess this makes me one of a kind. Yay for me, I’ve made it!

He didn’t sound like he was in that much distress for someone in a true crisis, he couldn’t even hold a tune, chimed in Lucki. Isn’t it odd that these others, and all others, consider me a fool for dancing and thinking? I’d like to drop the bags I carry for Pozzo and pick up the things lost by our friend. I’d like to be a free man to honor all men instead of a slave to the expectations of these few. These people, most people, don’t care about other people’s matters. Caring is the only thing that matters to me.

So the four coarse men, having heard of a disaster affecting someone they knew, did nothing while their buddy scurried about trying to mend and save and survive. They waited for a greater plea because they were too inundated with their personal concerns. They sat about a leafless tree, and talked ill about the hapless one, who never talked still about any one of them. He was always giving something, and never taking anything. Someone who just lost everything. The four each silently and secretly remembered when this current victim was there for them in the past – in an emotional instant. That was then but probably now – only now – was he considering what his rationale was for helping those four who would never show in the future, this future, for him. But they had it right. The odds are in their favor. If he was truly in a crisis following a disaster, surely needing urgent response, necessarily he would have to call…again. The clock was ticking. Just the farm aspect alone would be a cause for panic. No feed or hay for the livestock. Animal buildings torn asunder from flood waters. Predators finding easy prey on dumb animals left unprotected by their not-so-bright protector; by his now missing oh-so-loyal livestock guardian dog; by his faux-news-and-olds friends – one arrogant, one mental, one mad, one young – who profess that they admire him so much. Surely the put-upon will call…again.

One who showeth kindness to the undeserving is recompensed in the same manner as the aider of the hyena.

What is the cost of a second phone call by someone who cannot afford not to call? Too much pride (or too much pride still remaining)? Too busy (with full responsibility for that which is before him and no one responsible on the other end of the line after him)? Too frantic (with animals dying or dead, with growing black mold and exploding white maggots at his feet, with a timetable for insurance claims and an urgency to put things back the way they were)? He always tolerated sneering comments, abusive retorts, and apathetic attitudes because he was always helpless and couldn’t survive in this world without the support of someone smarter, wiser, and more decisive. Being socially inept, he has nowhere else to go. Although, I wonder what he did before me? Before us? Before the enlightened four? He must have thought he was waiting for some apparition or deity who would never show. When we hear his plea again, all four will be there in a second. Di-di-did you hear me?

If busy is a reason, he has one.

After all of the drinking and teasing and fun I’ve provided for him at my house all of these years, I’ll hear from him again. What’s so hard about making a second plea for help? I suppose maybe the first few days which have already past – since I committed to come over to re-mediate the disaster – might have been time critical. Even urgent. Maybe he’s picking up the remains of dead livestock. To tell the truth, I thought he would have failed, on his own, way before now, let alone him becoming a success, albeit mediocre, in a field, no pun intended, like agriculture, where he had no prior knowledge or ability or aspiration. Yes, he snapped to the task whenever I called him in my need. Now he is snapped in two. But I helped him on occasion, too. Yes, he patiently dealt with my family members, especially one, without complaint or grudge. No, I don’t feel I owe him anything because that would be a sign of weakness. He would take advantage of my gratitude, and my time, so I must never show it. Besides, I forget now why I was supposed to go go help. Help who? Help why? Help when?

The persecutor must be the one to stay angry, because, to admit fault would allow for forgiveness. Stay angry.

We are making too much of this. Everyone of us has greater concerns than this pseudo farmer does, at least I know I do. Look, I have no earned income and I haven’t had it in weeks. If it weren’t for the residuals from my inheritance, I’d be in quite the fix. In fact you’d be paying attention to me and not waiting on a second plea from HIM! He has insurance, let him grow another tail. He has those freaky Jesus people, let him grow a halo, a first halo. He must have known this was going to happen when he bought the place. Buying a property with a creek. A house in a flood plain. Putting his entire retirement on the line so that he could collect big in his senior years when the flood – he all but created – arrived to make him rich and sympathy-ed. Allowing other people, strangers, to clean up the intentional mess, which I before mentionally attributed to HIM. I should have heard from him by now. He owes me that. In fact, he owes me a lot! I know I’m right. I’ve convinced myself of it. What did I just say? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

In the end, we all grow to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life doesn’t cure, death will.

We’re not posers are we Pozzo?

Let me sing sad praises to us.

I have a dance that may seem loco

But it goes with my mood as I hear y’all cuss.

Didi fiddles with his broad black brimmer

The boots are stuck on Gogo still

They’re not two thieves but surely sinners

Tell a story to off the chill.

My pied piper Pozzo raves and rants

He sees it all but soon sight can’t

Lucki I sing and shuffle dance

Dumb I become but not by chance.

Burma Shave.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don’t understand the situation.

How many days have passed since? For that matter, what day is it? I notice there are now leaves on our sad tree. Could it be that we are waiting in the wrong spot? The tree was supposed to be leafless. Maybe the foliage is blocking the signal, like it would interfere with a sniper on a cold November day, a sniper who had more noble intent than we. Each of us four waiting saints wax about their interludes with the tragic one. How they had interrupted him, unintentionally, while he attempted to tell them of his dreams. Cutting him off was not intentional, because none were listening in the first place. Why should anyone listen to another’s private nightmares when they have their own, which are of far more importance to everyone still listening. None wanted him to go away. Each was lonely. Each wanted the loneliness to end. They agreed there is a sure way to do that – end this. But as time passes, the inspiration to do-you-know-what-to-you-know-who succumbs to the need to eat and eat they did. Carrots anyone?

Being alone isn’t that bad. It’s better than being lonely.

The wait continues but time stands still. Yet there are now five leaves on the once barren tree. Didi is singing a song about those five leaves. Didi never sings. When Gogo returns he recognizes Didi’s happiness in song and realizes that Didi would be happier alone. In fact, Gogo thinks he would be happier alone, too. Gogo proposes to Didi that they separate. Didi agrees that they both would be happier apart but that Gogo could not defend himself. They must stay together. They start to argue about whether it is now spring, why the tree is now covered with leaves, where the chicken bones on the ground before them came from, how the wound on Gogo’s leg came to be, who took Gogo’s boots and left another pair that fit him perfectly, and finally decide to converse calmly but immediately run out of things to say. Didi grows uncomfortable with the silence.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all much too soon.

Gogo is starving. Didi offers him something to eat. Gogo does not care for that particular morsel and hands it back. Didi says he’ll go and get him something else that is more appealing to his palate but does not move. Eventually they begin imitating Pozzo and Lucki, with Didi telling Gogo how to pose as Pozzo. Soon this past time turns to anger and insults which continue unto they both are breathless. Emotionally exhausted, they embrace and pace and face another day waiting for Godot.

Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.

While still waiting, they decide to come up with a reason to leave. Didi, the smart one says that, because Godot has insurance, there is really nothing that they can justify doing for him. If he didn’t have insurance, well, it would be an easier thing to justify, helping their friend who was flooded out. Gogo, the dumb one, surmises that Didi’s conclusion is a moot point, irrelevant to the discussion. Didi counters that if Godot had no insurance his situation would be more critical. Gogo offers that, yes, it would be more critical in the long run, but any victim of disaster has urgency and immediate needs and crisis that insurance can not immediately salve, let alone the intangible of lose and devastation. Didi is insistent. The uninsured will have no home of their own until a long time in the future, if at all. Gogo stands his ground and states that Didi’s moot point is still moot, that it is merely a distraction to take back the floor of discussion, and that it is meant to keep Didi the center of attention in a crowd of two. Additionally, if the uninsured deserve more sympathy than the insured, and sympathy is the point, then those who drowned deserve more sympathy than the uninsured. If the uninsured have less opportunity for resilience than the insured, and opportunity for resilience is the point, then the undocumented workers who are discovered by government officials while seeking disaster aid and then deported, then those who are deported have less opportunity for resilience than the uninsured. Finally, Gogo says, if deciding what is the greatest tragedy is the most important thing in this discussion, it is that one person’s actual misfortune is being subservient to a theoretical and impersonal one. Didi grows angrily silent at such a dumb suggestion.

Reason always makes mistakes but conscience never does.

Pozzo and Lucki return. Pozzo is now blind. Lucki stops at the sight of Didi and Gogo. Pozzo runs into Lucki and they fall, along with all of their baggage. Didi is aroused from his self pity at Pozzo’s cry for help. Didi reluctantly tries to help but then falls into the pile with them. Seeing the mess, Gogo decides to leave. Didi begs him to help. He promises Gogo they will leave immediately if he will help Didi up. Gogo relents but also falls down among them. Soon Didi and Gogo start to nap. Pozzo awakens them with his shouting. Didi strikes Pozzo in order to make him stop. Pozzo crawls away and Didi and Gogo call to him but he does not respond. Next, Didi calls to Pozzo, using the name of Cain. Pozzo now responds by crying for help. Didi wonders if Lucki will respond to the name of Abel and so calls out that name. Pozzo responds again. Gogo decides that Pozzo must be all of humanity.

Humanity comes out in a great many forms these days and there is no end to the things a humane person might say or do.

Immigration, you hear about immigration every day if you listen to the news. We hear how it brings us crime. We are told that we are losing jobs. We fear that it is bringing us disease. Do illegal aliens bring illegal, immoral and infectious things from there world lets look at what is said and what is actually being done, are you with me?

If you want to stop illegal immigration, you have to make it so that people who hire illegal immigrants won’t be in a position to hire them. Jesse Ventura

States have had inherent authority to enforce immigration laws when the federal government has refused to do so. Russell Pierce

For a period of several years, beginning with 1656, the records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and indeed of all of the New England Colonies, except Rhode Island, are filled with legislation designed to prevent the coming of the __________ and the spread of their ‘accursed tenets.’

The year 1717,lame, impotent, or infirm persons were prohibited from entering without providing security that the town into which they settled would not be charged with their support.

In England itself, the naturalization process required a profession of Christian faith and proof that an individual had taken the Sacrament in a Protestant church. As noted in this law for the colonies, exception was made for Quakers and Jews but specifically not for Roman Catholics (referred to in the law as Papists).

[T]he VAWA [Violence Against Women Act] provides a temporary visa and creates a pathway to legalization for undocumented immigrants who are the victims of domestic abuse.

2011, The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Arizona law that imposes sanctions against businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Numerous organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce, argued the state’s law was preempted by the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which forbids states from imposing sanctions for hiring illegal immigrants…

2000, Directs the Attorney General to grant refugee status in the United States to any alien (and the parent, spouse, or child of such alien) who: (1) is a national of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, or any of the independent states of the former Soviet Union; and (2) personally delivers into U.S. custody a living American Vietnam War POW or MIA.

1954, Operation Wetback originated in pressure from the Mexican government to stop illegal alien entry of Mexican illegal laborers to the United States.
1943, Bracero Program Brings 5,000,000 Mexican Temporary Laborers to Work in US Farms and Railroads in a 22-Year Period.

Feb. 19, 1923 – US Supreme Court Decides in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind That Asian Indians Do Not Qualify for Naturalization because They Are Not Considered “White”.

the specific intent of randomly killing Mexicans…solely because of their Latino ethnicity, beating up Mexicans…I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition.

David Ritcheson, 16, is attacked by racist skinheads at a house party after supposedly trying to kiss a white girl. A year later, the teenager commited suicide. Before his death, he assisted the Anti-Defamation League in creating an anti-hate program at his alma mater, Klein Collins High School.

Gilberto Mejía, owner of the Mexican grocery store Carnicería Los Primos, is verbally assaulted by anti-immigration activist June Griffin, who barges into the store and tears down a Mexican flag. Griffin then allegedly harasses Mejía and leaves threatening phone messages, which Mejia saves for police. “It was an act of war,” says Griffin, who has unsuccessfully run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican.

I sit in the factory parking lot waiting for my labor to walk across the street from their apartment. That massive hive of apartments full of worker bees who daily work long hours for short wages to produce sweet profits for sour employers. And now I am one of those sour pusses taking advantage, though in good company. Immigration reform, illegal aliens, and the rancor about them seem as ludicrous to me as the clowns espousing them as I watch the undocumented masses stream through the broken gates of the fixed system which promises as much misery as money. While employers openly exploit undocumented workers weekly; police stop them and ticket them for a taillight out, turning without a signal, and no drivers license – but seldom arrest them even though they are illegal; landlords fleece immigrant families with high rents, little service, and sometimes dangerous environments; restaurants and markets and clothiers cater to their hunger and thirst and need for a shirt on their backs. No complaints about the brown people as long as their money is green. No complaints about the twenty minute delay when immigrant children exit multiple school buses on many main roads at monster complexes as long as their parents have worked overtime for under the minimum wage. No complaints if the false driver’s license gets the desperate soul from the church to the job site on time. Oh, wait, my contractors have arrived.

I sit in front of the TV each night trying to understand this immigration issue while the din of protest about it blares out from the outraged screen. Who is being harmed by honest labor by willing workers and profiteering employers? Yes, there are bad people in the immigration community, but that ratio of bad to good does not exceed that of citizens as a whole, I’m sure of that. Yes, there are good people, citizens, who are out of work because of the good cheap available immigration labor, but this does not really seem to be the issue, I think. No, I don’t feel bad that I’m possibly hiring someone with documentation problems, or that a citizen might be employed in the immigrant’s place, or that my benefit will end with a crime by a criminal immigrant. I’m happy as a clam and feeling fortunate as well as I pickup my jovial workforce and join the flow toward, what I jokingly call, the Tower of Babel.

I don’t speak Spanish, except in jest. If I attempt it, I’m told to take a rest. God bless the long lines of multiple school buses on many main roads at monster complexes that take young immigrant children and produce superb citizens, magnificent athletes, productive workers, and young adults who speak English! Yes, when you have a crew which includes a young one who speaks the lingua franca, you reduce the Tower of Babel to a mere three stories, much like the apartments, as the thick American employer tries to communicate rapid English and thin Spanish to the skilled immigrant contractor through his or here bi-lingual exceptional child in a back and forth, sometimes comical exchange.

Admittedly, I have not paid much attention to immigration until now because now it affects me. I know very little Spanish. I know about green cards. I about people crossing the Rio Grand, formerly known as wetbacks. People become illegal aliens in this country because they have no other options. They are desperate. We, the United States government, are not accommodating, but we do need these workers. Most of the following text was copied or modified from the webpage of American Immigration Council. The total number of green cards available for all less skilled workers is 5,000 a year, for the entire country. Even in those cases where family ties do exist to apply for legal entry, individuals abroad face years or decades of waiting for a visa to become available. The annual Diversity Visa program makes 55,000 green cards available to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. That means people from Mexico, China, the Philippines, India, and other countries with higher levels of immigration to the United States are not eligible.

By employing possibly undocumented workers am I taking jobs from native born citizens? If immigrants actually “took” jobs away from significant numbers of native-born workers, then one would expect to find high unemployment rates in parts of the country with large numbers of immigrants, especially recently arrived immigrants who are presumably more willing to work for lower wages and under worse conditions than either long-term immigrants or native-born workers. Yet there is little apparent relationship between recent immigration and unemployment rates at the regional, state, or county level. An analysis of 2011 Census data found that, at the county level, there is no statistically significant relationship between the unemployment rate and the presence of recent immigrants who arrived in 2000 or later. Immigrants continue to be nearly twice as likely as the native-born to become entrepreneurs, with the rate of new entrepreneurs being 0.52 percent for immigrants, compared to 0.27 percent for the native-born.

I was at a loss for words, words that perhaps would have gotten me into even more trouble. I came, I saw, I kept my mouth shut. If I’m not fired with enthusiasm, I will be fired, with enthusiasm. I ask not what your company can do for me, but what your company can do for my wallet. You said I was always late – true enough. You said I was not prepared – true enough. You said I did not defend your statements – true enough. Is it too late for me to warn: Judge not, lest ye be judged? Or maybe: My heart is not judged by how much I despise, but by how much I despise you. If you do me in today won’t you feel awful tomorrow when you hear, “He’s passed on! This parasite is no more! He has ceased to be! He’s expired and gone to meet his maker!” People who like this sort of thing (hating me) will find this the sort of thing they like. Nothing is worse than doing nothing (but hate me). I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, starting after you are deceased. To my thick self, everyone is ‘boring, boring, boring!’ You heard it with our own floppy ears here first. I try to forget (you’re a jerk), and in the forgetting, you are entirely forgotten. We all want this. It’s accomplished, we succeeded, won, and walked away victorious. To think clearly and rationally should be a major goal for man (when thinking of you); but to think clearly and rationally is always the greatest difficulty faced by man (when thinking of you).

So, then I pulled out a claw hammer — are you still with me here? After I did the deed, the car wouldn’t start this time, but at least it didn’t catch on fire (this time). As I sat waiting for the PoPo, I thought: Many (police) are called, but few are chosen (for humanitarian awards). As I lay prone on the gravel, they tell me once and I forget. They beat me twice and I remember. They incarcerate me and I learn a new criminal skill. No one would suggest that those who are brainless elected to be the class clown. As the cop’s knee approached my face rapidly, I contemplated: Should I strike now, or bide my time? After that first knee, I began my attack of words: If you do that one more time, I’m gonna –… So, I ask you, dear reader, what would you have me do? My detached self – reacted to my detached retina – it was disturbed — make that appalled — by the spectacle. Observing my reflection in the pool of blood forming inches from my broken nose, I mused: You are the fairest flower in this tenement — nay, in the entire barrio. These dirty cops could do no more to me. They cannot denigrate, they cannot deprecate, they cannot decry me further. My fellow marginalized read and studied and wrote and passed and graduated. We fared no better here than those who laughed and played and talked and failed. So that’s why I’ve prepared a special bullet for a special someone. I made it nice and hot, just the way you like it.

You found my weakness. You are a hero, a prince, a god! Coming of cerebral maturity in the year 2000, I am the very model of a mental modern millennial. I’m (bragging you know) uninformed in history, geography, and etiquette. That’s us. We not few, we happy but not few, we band of not few happy boorish bothers. As for you, Hero, I have three words for you mental pre-millennials: old, odd, odoriferous. Going forward, what we will be seeking . . . will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say, redundantly, sarcastic millennials. You’ve already seen it, a hundred head of millennials scattered throughout the coffee klatches or spinning their vino at an under-thirty wine bar.

Each word of sarcasm was dull wit from one half so. Frogy croaked – You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass. – like he was Solomon and those words were being spoken for the first time. Don’t judge a fool by his foolishness (he deserves worse). After his laughter died (the extent of the wished for death here) he added – We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately(I’ll do the hangin’ around here, Baba Looey). Listening to his drone set my blood boiling. It was a cool 100 degrees in the shade (of my numb scull). His was an intellect quickly surpassed. It is a sad state but true. Sudden insecurity and confusion drove him to cliche. Enter the obnoxious fake laugh primeval.

The assassin was not unacquainted with doofus, you see. Calling him an idiot would be an insult to stupid people. Are you always this stupid, or are you just making a special effort today? I told him: Get out of my way, you mouth-breathing cretin. He moved proudly. Before he could retort I hit him with the nearest thing, a link sausage (lucky for me). He shot back: It’s just a flesh wound! Then fainted at the site of Dijon. The clash and clang of another whipping sausage jarred him awake. Do not let a gift sausage in your mouth…he thought that was how the phrasing went. His next salvo was: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you – and let fly his own sausage fusillade. Seeing my enjoyment of his porcine screed, he screamed: You’re the most arrogant, selfish, self-absorbed, insufferable narcissist I’ve ever met! Am I blushing?

My son and I stepped carefully along the path of debris from the front yard of destruction to the backyard of despair. On the back is the burn pile. Though a grown adult, my son turned his head curiously side to side, looking agape, much like his three-year old son did, at the ruin which had accumulated from the recent flood. Standing at what would be the perimeter of what would be the burn pile at what would be the end of the day, he asked me, “Are you still angry about what happened with the flood?”. No one had yet asked me that. But I had an answer, though borrowed from someone far more eloquent than me. I said, “Anger is a luxury I can’t afford in times like these”.

I can’t afford to be angry. To get angry. To stay angry. I can’t allow self pity. Not in times like these. Three weeks ago, I lost most of my possessions, in a flooded house, and saw my poultry business go south, wet light feathers on lead flood waters. So, for those of you who think I am angry because you did not show up to help, I can’t afford it. There is too much to clean up. For those of you who think I’m not calling you because I am wallowing in self pity, I can’t allow self pity. There are animals to care for, a dwelling to rebuild, a farm to restore. Don’t get me wrong. Fortitude, like anger, has its stages. One day I’ll hate you, but not today. One day I’ll cry me a river, but it will have to wait. Today, I’ll have to be strong, which I never was.

The first response of others to another’s crisis is emotional. Sorrys pour like overflow at a spillway in the hundred year flood. Next, comes logic. Expressing sorrow can be an easy sell, an inexpensive as a single cell phone call. There, you’re done. Check it off, Anton. Back to your yoga, Yogi. After the emotional response, logic kicks in. It should be obvious that something could be done for a friend in need following a devastating flood. The single word flood, even for the thick, should not require a treatise on urgency, devastation, and despair. But that’s your attitude as a flood survivor…when you are reflecting unto yourself, the victim.

Doing something for someone must take time, will take effort and might even cost money. This is the over balancing rational of the person who would be help? Logical questions arrive to rescue them. Can I afford it in these times? Can I back out of commitments made while way back in those illogical emotional times? Can I present convincingly, to the needy and, more importantly to myself, the arguments that justify never showing up and never even calling, for the time being? Yes! It just takes attitude. And then there’s bonus time. After the victim’s industrial dumpster is overflowing, his wet salvaged coin and currency collection is basking in the sun, and four stray pit-bulls stock his livestock on his semi-abandoned farm, you can pile on with euphemisms. What’s the matter there, you’ve been keeping a low profile. Hey, you must be busy there, ’cause there’s been a failure to communicate. I guess you’re angry there, you’ll get over it, you always do.

There must be fifty ways to leave your friends in a lurch, many strategies to backing out or never backing in to helping those who suddenly need dumpster service. Let’s look at three. Strategy One: You don’t really want to help. If you don’t really want to help you will use any excuse, it won’t be complicated. I have to mow the grass. You know fast it grows in these times? I must clean the pool. Don’t you pity me, it takes so much time? I have Yoga class today (just in time). Did you know I have perfect attendance (wish me luck!)? With Strategy One, made-up excuses run out quick. The reluctant would-be-helper will quickly look to the victim to supply the excuses.

I didn’t like your attitude – when I told you I had to mow.

I expected you to call me daily – after I cleaned the pool.

I assumed you would call me back immediately – after I texted that I wasn’t coming.

I know you’re angry – so I won’t show up.

Ad nauseam.

Strategy Two of Help avoidance is justification. Remember, these are strategies of logic which soon follow reactions of emotion. Justification!

Why should I help you when my problems are bigger than yours?

You have (pick one) insurance, income, in-laws, and I don’t.

I can’t spend money I don’t have on things I can’t afford for someone who has never been there for me.

With the airtight alibi, which justification yields, you miss the subtlety that reality could bring to self serving faulty perception. The victim can bypass debate with the justifier’s logic and move him direct past “NO GO” to the stunning conclusion that: When a disaster victim needs help, they don’t care what your excuse or justification is. “I needed help and you didn’t show up”. It is without measure.

Strategy Three of Help avoidance is being busy. I’m busy. I actually prefer this one. It leaves the disaster-victim-needing-help nowhere to go. With Strategy One, you have excuse by number. With Strategy Two, you have excuse by values. But with Strategy Three you have no excuses. Can’t be challenged or debated or rationalized or justified. I’m not coming. End of story. Kinda. Well sorta. Busy is the antidote to most problems in life. If you lost everything in a flood, get busy. If you lost your income and are waiting for financial collapse, get busy. If you have a small business and too much work to rescue other people, save yourself, stay busy. You might lose a friend because you’re too busy to help them or call them or think about them. But if you are busy, you have plenty to keep you that way, and another friend will wander in off the street as soon as that ex-friend departs on the next flood waters and leaves an opening. A.M.F.

What is it you can’t create in another person? I’m going to elect the emotion empathy. What is it you can’t explain in yourself? I’m going to give the word gratitude. My precious emotion is gratitude. The number of that beautiful beast is 27. Twenty-seven helpers showed up yesterday to clean-up my washout. I did nothing to create the empathy they felt…it was already there. They did everything to explain the gratitude I feel for their effort…it was created by them. Just when you least expect it, just what you least expect. My Damascus Moment always rolls in on a wave of disaster and leaves me on a higher dryer place, with a bit wiser perspective. Thanks be to those with innate empathy. Praise be to the emotional option of empathy, resulting in my emotional gratitude, symbolized by the number 27, and emblematic of a higher place which reason, justification, and self-importance never reach. I have to go. I’m very busy you know.

When you are first fleeing disaster, you don’t stand on ceremony. When you are next faced with survival, excuses don’t sit well. By the time you reach out for recovery, you know where your friends lie.

This article is about the TV show House MD, Season 5, Episode 8 – Titled: Emancipation

This is my favorite episode of House MD for more reasons than I can count and for deeper reasons than I can understand. Why would a minor seek emancipation (divorce from parents)? What’s worse than rape? Does being rational before emotional mean there is no emotion to process? These are very specific topics but, with a step back, one can imagine related resolutions, traumas, and rational in their own life journey. How about resolutions such as actual divorce or even unfriending? What if there is extreme guilt over the terrible harm one has brought upon another? How can anyone justify empathy for another person when they are blinded by their own despair? What does Dr. House say?

Here is a partial plot summary from Wikipedia:

The team takes on the case of a 16-year-old factory manager who fell ill when her lungs suddenly filled with fluid while at work. The teenager informs House and the team that she is an emancipated minor living on her own and supporting herself, and has been doing so ever since her parents died. The team begins treatment for suspected heart problems, but Kutner chooses to sympathize with the patient rather than follow House’s directions and gives her steroids instead of beta-blockers. She has a psychotic break. An MRI shows that the patient lied about her parents’ deaths. She says that she had emancipated herself because her father raped her and mother pretended it didn’t happen.

The first thing I learned from this episode was that there is such a thing as Emancipation of a minor: divorce from parents. I had heard of people wanting to “divorce” their parents but I didn’t know that it was an actual “thing”. I can understand this desire in a fit of anger but going through with it would seem to be more trouble than it would be worth. So, yeah, a teenager that goes through with emancipation is a seriously upset kiddo.

The second thing I learned from this episode was that there are somethings worse than rape. When the girl says she was raped she figured she had sure buy in. A rape accusation is an automatic pass to believing the victim. Logic and scrutiny are usually put aside. But why would someone lie about rape as part of a strategy of avoidance and put life at risk? And how do you get beyond her deception and into the truth? By pure logic and scrutiny. Rules of thumb or thumb screws? Truth serum or lye in the eye? Torture or torch her? No. It’s benevolence stupid. Try to understand her as you understand anyone else. The value in relations is benevolence. To achieve benevolence one must comprehend human nature. That is Dr. House’s greatest talent.

The third thing I learned from this episode was that decisions are always emotional before they are rational. When someone comes to you with an airtight excuse, alibi, or explanation for their behavior, you should call bullshit. The underlying motive and initial reason is emotional. Everything else is window dressing. As the explanation becomes more logical and even accusative of you, that person drifts into repetition and hyperbole. This happens so often when friends don’t show. They are trying to convince you of their lie. Don’t buy it because, if you do, get ready for more of the same. This type of behavior especially happens when you are in crisis and need them. If you don’t buy their lie, they take the position that you are angry. If, indeed, you are in a time of crisis, anger is a luxury you can’t afford in those times. Cut them lose. They are excess baggage. They’ll get heavier with time.

Three things were scheduled. Two things were started. One thing got done. So it goes daily at the delta formerly known as Sawmyl Synders. I wanted to finish pressure washing the mud out of the back section of my barn. I hoped to clean and sweep the now sparse bathroom for appearance this weekend. I wished that my giant dumpster was delivered early so that the bags of maggots and summits of sheet rock could be disposed. The dumpster arrived!

I worked most of the morning moving boxes and shelves in the back of the barn. After this step, the large shelves could be moved and boxes and tubs could be transferred from other shelves and the process could be repeated. The first layer of creek mud was washed out off the cement floor through two holes in the corners of that slick barn. Next it was super squeegee time. In two hours the cement floor was no longer slippery – but I was. Time for a big break.

I intended to air dry – myself – in the dwelling’s air conditioning while doing some work online. However, my little Verizon brick (internet connection device) broke. The battery had swelled, maybe it had exploded, for sure it had tried to say goodbye to me with a suffocated display. What to do? See the thieves at Verizon of course. But not before taking a cold water shower in a debris scattered tub behind a filthy but serviceable plastic curtain. At the Verizon store, in the early afternoon, on a 90+ degree day I got the call. The boys from Caron Services came through with my dumpster order early. But I only had a few minutes to turn around and go north back to the homestead. Just made it.

As I stood and watched the dumpster delivery guy leave, with my boot bottoms firmly caked in mud, and another slick film beginning to form on my pale freckled and scarred skin, I thought of only one thing. Beer. Dark beer. Strong dark beer. Cold strong dark beer. All I had was empty beer bottles. Lots. It was almost three so I had to go directly to pick up my own sweet Vee. Don’t be late and don’t be hurried, if you do she might be worried. Burma Shave.

Today, I have a FEMA Disaster Recovery guy coming at 9 A.M. and he wants paper proof that I own the house. All of that is soaking somewhere on the grounds. Today, I have a friend coming over to take a look at my small engine equipment to see if he can do anything to fix them after the flood. Today, I must complete pressure washing the barn and sweep the bathroom. And of course there is the dumpster. When all you have is dumpster, mud, sweat, and empty beer bottles, be sure to remember that – every descent has an ascent in it’s future.

Three things are planned today – deal with FEMA, finish the barn cleana, and load stuff at the dumpster arena. I hope I don’t make too much noise for the non-existent neighbors or that the stink I stir up doesn’t bother the wildlife. I could use a beer right now.

Saturday is fast approaching. I ordered a three cubic yard dumpster for Friday. It’s Wednesday and I feel like…

I can’t pull my car out of the mud and I’m in the middle of nowhere and its pouring rain and I can’t get the top back up and my paycheck’s all blurred and my foot went right through the gas and my girl’s screaming bloody murder because she’s scared of the dark and a stroke of lightning splits my motor in half and my suit’s shrinking up fast and I start up the windy road on foot and sixty yards of barbed wire hits me right smack in the puss and we both fall down in the mud and then a wild animal comes over and runs away with my shoes and my car blows up suddenly and my windshield-wiper ends up in my mouth and I can’t move and the mud’s rising up to my nostrils and I’m sinking fast and I don’t hear my girl screaming anymore…

I need to occupy my mind. I need to think about the things that need to be done and stop thinking about the terrible things that might happen next. How about tasks for the work crew this weekend? I cleaned the house flooring of debris so that preparations for construction can proceed. I pressure washed the barn and garage so that no one slips and falls doing their appointed tasks. I picked up broken mirrors and scattered nails so that cuts and punctures are minimized. I made a list of tasks. What tasks did I leave out?

Here’s a task: rock raking. When the flood waters rushed over Nichols Sawmill Road and out of the angry creek, my pebbles were displaced. Someone has to take a long and stealthy rake and smooth out the driveway path.

Here’s another task: timber stack attack. There is a stack 200 landscape timbers which was carried across the back pasture and is now pinned against the far fence. Someone has to pick them up, two by two, and re-stack them back in the center of the field.

Here’s one more: feeder foundation fixing. There are four fifty-pound capacity poultry feeders lifted by the flood waters and carried on the cement blocks. Those heavy wooden contraptions need to be scraped and emptied and returned to the appropriate cement block pedestal.

Here’s a task: Coop II resurrection. This chicken coop is impassable and needs to have several items removed before even its chicken feeder can be accessed.

Here’s a task: rose garden flowerbed timber job. The entire landscape timber border was lifted out of place in tact and needs to be re-positioned by a couple of strong bodies.

Here’s a task: wooden telephone pole removal. A ten foot piece of telephone pole is wedged near the front porch and needs to be removed by a couple of strong bodies.

Here’s a task: barn frontage trash removal. Several garbage bags and cans of refuse sit outside the barn and need to betaken to dumpster.

Here’s a task: refrigerator extrication. My garage refrigerator was picked up by flood waters and placed in the middle of my sixteen-foot trailer but must be removed and moved to the salvage yard.

Here’s a task: lumber load-up. I have several pieces of dimensioned lumber which needs to be gathered together into the yard known as the picnic area.

Here’s a task: wire roll-out. The different types of fencing wire on the trailer and in the field need to be put in one place for future organization.

Here’s a task: burn notice. Anything that will burn without fumes or hazard should be pile in the back for later blaze.

My wife and I, our house flooded last May. Our son, his house flooded last April. His friend, her house was flooded, too. Besides all of us now living together in our son’s under construction, small, three-bedroom house, what else do you think we have in common? For flood victims, a flood being a huge problem is a common condition. It’s not just the loss. The living arrangements are desperate, the cleanup is critical, and life must go on for pets and livestock. Flood victims deserve some consideration from those who are made aware but who are not affected. Every caring person should think this way. However, that’s just the way flood-way victims think. This thinking may not be in the consciousness of their BFF’s – who know of it but never show up to push a mop. I have been pondering this phenomenon in my new swamp dwelling for the past couple of weeks and I have concluded that there is simply something that I don’t know or understand. The BFF’s called and said, very convincingly, how sorry they were about the flood and the loss. Each BFF said to “let them know” what he or she could do for us, the victims. The BFF’s said they mourned our loss and volunteered to help. But those who most easily say sorry are most prominently no-shows. I thought surely they would help, if they could help. Surely, they’ll find the time. Surely, they’ll consider our past and our future and act in the present. We are, after all, BFF’s, am I right?

An answer to my puzzlement, puzzlement over BNS (BFF No Shows), came softly and subtly. Our son’s friend, who is staying with us, told me of her parallel experience. Her BFF, having all the equipment and skill for flood mitigation, never stopped by, never seriously offered a reason why, never said boo. But then at a recent gathering, pictures of her dwelling “deluge” were shared. A picture is worth a thousand words. No verbal pleas could bring the BFF over to that disaster area but pictures brought over reality. The BFF understood now, maybe even felt guilty. Even though the facts were spoken clear enough, recognizing what they meant – was missed. I had my answer to my own conundrum. It wasn’t something I was missing or misunderstood. That something was them. Was it that the carefree BFF’s couldn’t see the forest for the debris, couldn’t hear the words above their own self-importance, couldn’t feel the pain for their lack of compassion? No. They were BUSY!

So, if a certain busy BFF didn’t show up at your after flood party, you aren’t alone. If they continue for weeks to tell you how busy they are and never show up, it’s just because they’re not getting the picture. It may be, they surmise, that if you are STILL really needing help, that you will call them – again – to find out what time they’re NOT showing up that day. It may be that they’re expecting you to offer them a hot meal if they show up at your place after they have completed their daily routine. Perhaps, one day in the future, they plan to help you for two hours at four o’clock in the afternoon, but only if they can take a one hour break for that hot meal you promised. Maybe, after their yard is mowed, their pool is cleaned, their errands are run, their hours are worked, their other BFF’s are helped, and their yoga class is over, they’ll show. Surprise! They still haven’t gotten the picture yet.

Analysis of Bacon’s Essay “Of Friendship” by Kiran.A.K.L. (The 3 Fruits of Friendship)

Kiran first explains Baconian style as following the two fundamental Renaissance principles of:

Search for Knowledge and

The Art of Rhetoric

Each of these are presented in an aphoristic style. But, according to the reviewer, the essay Of Friendship is different in that it contains passionate and flattering statements and profuse analogies with examples to support or explain his arguments. I find Kiran’s finding puzzling. All of Bacon’s essays contain passionate and flattering statements and profuse analogies with a plethora of examples to support and no shortage of explanations for his arguments. And then some. Kiran possibly used his prior finding as a segue to insert the fact that the essay was requested by a friend. He then quotes Aristotle again: Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. Dog or God.

Kirin then quotes Bacon’s essay, stating that friendship is necessary for maintaining good mental health by controlling and regulating the passions of the mind. Bacon speaks of the therapeutic use of friendship through which one can lighten the heart by revealing the pent-up feelings and emotions: sorrows, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, advice. So, the first (1) and principal fruit of friendship is good mental health.

Note here that if Bacon’s assessment is taken as fact, then a relationship that degrades one’s mental health, disturbs the passions to extremes, heavies the heart, inflames feelings and emotions, is a litmus test which reveals what you all ready suspect – your companion is not a friend.

Bacon justifies friendship by pointing out that royalty makes friends by “raising” persons fit for friendship. I’m not sure exactly how this would work. He tries to glorify friendship by translating a Roman term for friendship which means ‘sharers of their cares’. Today we would say Care Bears. He gives examples of deterioration of mental faculty because of loneliness. That’s simply crazy. Bacon asserts that friendship functions in a double manner: “…it doubles joys, and cuts griefs in half”. Much like the Doublemint Twins of today who provide joyous chewing gum and grievous television commercials but also leave you something to stick under your desk at work for later.

Bacon’s second (2) fruit of friendship is clarity. A friend clarifies confusions, his counsel is “drier and purer” than the counsel of one’s self, counsel out of self love. With a friend there are two kinds of counsel: manners and business. Constructive criticism of behavior is better than that of a book of morality – but more boring than the Kama Sutra. In business, a true friend’s advice helps one avert danger – usually taking you straight into poverty.

The third (3) fruit of friendship is help. Bacon quotes “a friend is another self”, that friend can achieve unfulfilled desires and can talk to you on equal terms. Kiran concludes that Bacon concludes that a man’s life is concluded if he does not have a friend. If you have the usual procession of faux friends, the ones that never show-up when you need them, life with these “friends” is hell on earth and if this all you have then your life needs to be concluded or they need to be excluded from your life.

So, boys and girls, what have we learned from reviewing Kiran’s look at Bacon’s essay on Of Friendship?

One thing you should have noted, though unstated, is that this essay (and each of Bacon’s essays) is written by and for men and their manly friendships. Women’s friendships weren’t important in 16th century Europe (for a good laugh read Bacon’s take on women in his essay Of Anger). In any case the key take away is that Kiran see’s Bacon’s essay Of Friendship as consisting of 3 beneficial fruits:

mental health: modulate passions, lighten the heart

clarity: pure insight into the confusions of behavior and business

help: fulfill needs, desires, and tasks while communicating without deference or condescension.

The benefits of friendship are:

Does that other person (think contemporary here, you can include females) incite destructive passion and heavy your heart?

Does that other person cause your behavior to be confused or even amoral and lead into business bungles?

When you need help whether it be with future goals (like keeping my head above water) or present tribulations (like a farging flood where 90% of my possessions floated south to the Gulf of Mexico) or in analyzing past personal mysteries (like why some mental case didn’t show up for an emergency as promised), does this “friend” show up with straight talk and a helping hand or do that person stand on ceremony?

If you can’t enter yes to all three questions, it’s time to exit this one relationship. There must be 50 ways.

OF FRIENDSHIP: analysis by paragraph with comments on style and other notes.

by Pat Der Sin

Friendship is the determinate as to whether a person is human or not. If you have no friends you are either a wild beast or a god. Take note all you workaholics and hustlers. Now the friendless can be distinguished by their pursuits as to whether they are beast or god. If solitude and aversion towards society is a product of higher conversion from heathen to hermit to holy father, you might be a god. If you are a practicing beast, raise you paw or claw. Without friends the world is wilderness. In between friendships the world is a journey. In found friendship, the world stops spinning out of control and waits to see how long your relations will last. I like particularly, in this first paragraph, this series:

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

This Bacon sizzles and entices the reader all the way to its period. “No Love” is the object. But how did we get there? Well, if there IS love then there must be company in that crowd, or feelings in those faces, or a resounding cymbal the spoken language. Check your crowd, faces, and talk the next time you’re out and about. Do you feel me?

Bacon’s principal fruit of friendship is analogized to the practice of medicine. He lists the cures for physical ailments then imparts that friendship is the cure for mental and emotional ailments. In today’s medical practice, my cardiologist doesn’t consider your problem her problem unless it involves making money. That means expensive surgery or dangerous drugs are the only solution, even if there is no problem. In other words, if she were your friend and you were bound and gagged and chained to a chair, she would recommend a stent and a statin which carries a number of warnings from the FDA and the dubious American Heart Association. Surgery and prescriptions is the only stuff American health insurance pays for these days. It’s not the doctor’s fault, they’re following protocol you know.

Bacon has two paragraphs on kings and princes and other Roman royalty which describes how important friends are and even how friends are raised, much like my deceased chickens. The second paragraph details a rather dense review of how the Roman cow ate the romaine cabbage, which I find of little use in my exploration of friendship for application in today’s context. Oh, if could only be 100 BC.

Bacon calls those who do not seek the counsel of friends “Cannibals of their own hearts”. Pretty neat! Lack of joy and preponderance of grief can be relieved by the joker you call friend and you can that hearty heart meal for later when you have run them off due to your own pretentiousness and condescension.

The second fruit of friendship is understanding. A friend provides clarity, order, and wisdom. Counsel that is considerate yet free of emotions comes from a friend whether it is on behavior or business. One’s faults can be acknowledged when presented by a friend. Errors and extremes can be avoided when another walks you through the perils of your personal purpose.

There are many things a man can’t do himself. There are so many of those things that can be done with, by, and because of friend. Without a friend, your life’s work is over when you die. With a friend, your life continues and things continue to get done in your name.